It’s odd when you can have two unrelated posts that go together very well in hindsight. The example of this would be the "Game On" and "Restaurant Not Required" posts from yesterday. Looking a little deeper, it looks like the intent of the Wine Spectator snafu was to add publicity for an upcoming book and had slightly more to the story than had been previously mentioned.

Wine Spectator added their side of the story to their forum here and it turns out that Goldstein fulfilled all the requirements that Spectator checks to confirm the existence of the restaurant: website, Chowhound, phone number. A little more work than just submitting the forms as he implied on his blog. Also it looks like the 15 wines he highlighted were just part of the 256 wines submitted of which 53 were rated higher than 90 points on their archaic numerical scale. Full Disclaimer: I still prefer our pictorial approach here at My Wine Education.

So good news for everyone. People who dislike "The Speculator" get ammo as there was a miss by the magazine in presenting the award, Goldstein gets extra publicity for his book, the blog-o-sphere gets all wound up over half a story, and Wine Spectator lovers get to point out how no one gives the magazine any love by going off half-cocked with only half the story. I guess it’s all part of the marketing/publicity game and I don’t have to like it, especially when no value has been added to my life. I will still read WS, but then again I’m a sucker for pretty pictures.